[Type 5] Becoming a Healthier 5

[Luminous]

This thread is for sharing or asking for advice/tips/information on becoming healthier and dealing with common issues relevant to enneatype.

To start us off, here are some tips from the Enneagram Institute:

• Learn to notice when your thinking and speculating takes you out of the immediacy of your experience. Your mental capacities can be an extraordinary gift, but only can also be a trap when you use them to retreat from contact with yourself and others. Stay connected with your physicality.
• You tend to be extremely intense and so high-strung that you find it difficult to relax and unwind. Make an effort to learn to calm down in a healthy way, without drugs or alcohol. Exercising or using biofeedback techniques will help channel some of your tremendous nervous energy. Meditation, jogging, yoga, and dancing are especially helpful for your type.
• You see many possibilities but often do not know how to choose among them or judge which is more or less important. When you are caught in your fixation, a sense of perspective can be missing, and with it the ability to make accurate assessments. At such time, it can be helpful to get the advice of someone whose judgment you trust while you are gaining perspective on your situation. Doing this can also help you trust someone else, a difficulty for your type.
• Notice when you are getting intensely involved in projects that do not necessarily support your self-esteem, confidence, or life situation. It is possible to follow many different fascinating subjects, games, and pastimes, but they can become huge distractions from what you know you really need to do. Decisive action will bring more confidence than learning more facts or acquiring more unrelated skills.
• Fives tend to find it difficult to trust people, to open up to them emotionally, or to make themselves accessible in various ways. Their awareness of potential problems in relationships may tend to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is important to remember that having conflicts with others is not unusual and that the healthy thing is to work them out rather than reject attachments with people by withdrawing into isolation. Having one or two intimate friends whom you trust enough to have conflicts with will enrich your life greatly.

 

[Luminous]

 

[Fivewingfour]

Practices that help Fives develop, from The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson:

• Remember that your mind is clearest and most powerful when it is quiet. Take the time to cultivate this quiet in yourself, and do not confuse it with an insistence that your external world be silent. Rather, learn to notice your nonstop internal commentary on all of your experiences. What arises when you simply take in an impression of the moment without connecting it with what you think you already know? Being connected with your physical sensations will greatly help you quiet your mind.
• Use your body! Of all of the types, you probably feel you could almost do without your body, and it is easy for you to spend many hours at the computer or reading or listening to music. While there is nothing wrong with any of these activities, your balance requires more physical activity. Try running, yoga, dancing, martial arts, working out, even taking a walk. When your body is awake and your blood is flowing, your mind is much sharper and you have more internal resources.
• Make the effort to reach out to others, especially when you are feeling vulnerable and afraid. As a Five, you have been conditioned not to expect support from anyone, even to be suspicious of help. But this belief is probably not applicable to your current situation, and you can use your intelligence to figure out who will be stable and there for you when you are having troubles. Speak up. Make your needs known, and you may be surprised. Your tendency to isolate usually only gets you deeper into your own trap.
• Think carefully about what areas are most debilitating to your self-confidence. Learning more about world geography will not help you if you feel physically weak, but working out and exercising will. Composing another song will not do much for you if you are really worried about meeting people. You can continue working on whatever projects interest you, but it can be very powerful to explore more directly some of the areas of your life that you have cut off.
• Risk feeling your grief. Most Fives split off their awareness from their pains and hurts, especially from feelings of rejection. You know what it is like when those feelings are closer to the surface. Don’t swallow them. In a safe and appropriate place, allow yourself to sense your heart and the feelings that are locked there. This can be even more powerful if you can do it with a witness: a friend, your therapist, or anyone that you trust. Ask the person not to give you pep talks but simply to be there as a witness to your pain and struggles.
• As you become more balanced and grounded in your body, let your impressions of others and of the world around you affect you—let the world in. You will not lose yourself, you will gain the world. This will give you the sense of confidence and well-being that you have been seeking—and it will give you many new insights in the process. Just remember not to get lost in pondering the insights, and to return to planet earth. Remember, this is your life: you are not an abstraction, and your presence here can and does matter.
• Bring your ideas to fruition. You are most effective when you stop refining concepts and actually get into action. Whenever possible, find people that you can share your ideas with. A group of creative or intellectual peers who are interested in your work can help you to keep things moving. Also, although you are not keen on collaboration, it can be very useful in keeping you from collapsing into preparation mode.